Susan Gordon, Business Reporter

National Commercial Bank's General Manager of the International Business Division, N. Christian Stokes. - File

National Commercial Bank (NCB) is in talks with global payment service company MoneyGram in a bid to capture a portion of the near US$1.7 billion in remittances that flow to Jamaica annually.

The commercial bank said it was seeking ways to encourage Jamaican nationals abroad to channel remittance capital into investments, saying a large and reputable transfer agent like MoneyGram offers leverage.

Christian Stokes, General Manager for NCB International Business Division, said the bank hopes to wrap up the talks in two months.

MoneyGram is a 66-year-old company with operations in over 100,000 locations worldwide, including Jamaica. It has both a global funds transfer division which serves retail businesses, and a payment systems division that services financial institutions.

NCB's push to channel remittances into productive activity comes on the heels of an international study signalling that more foreign nationals are willing to invest their earnings in real estate and other ventures in their home countries.

"NCB is exploring ways to facilitate the use of remittance inflows for business development and wealth creation. We are seeking to leverage the network of a number of existing money transfer companies" Stokes told Wednesday Business in a brief interview yesterday.

"We want to make it easier for Jamaicans to consider to use the remittance platform to invest in the bank," stressed Stokes.

Foreign investments

He said NCB's wire transfer service already generates over US$1 billion in commercial foreign investments.

NCB is already an agent for MoneyGram and has its own remittance services from the United Kingdom and Cayman.

"We are still at a stage where we are looking at what portion of this US$1.7 billion could go into investment," he said.

It would be a branding and marketing arrangement with the companies said Mr. Stokes, adding that NCB did not intend to invest too much capital if any, in setting up the arrangement. However, he said NCB would want to target over the US$1.7 billion in revenue from extending its MoneyGram partnership.

MoneyGram would be an ideal partner, said Stokes, because of its track record of compliance overseas, its network and technological infrastructure.

susan.smith@gleanerjm.com